SUBMISSIONS CALL & THEME FOR ISSUE 3: MAGIC
All art is magical in origin…it is intended to make things happen.
- William S Burroughs.
All art is magical, so says leading avant sorcerer Lord Bill Burroughs.
If this be so, and you are an artist, then you are also a magician.
How strong is your art? How strong is your Magic?
During the cave-and-carnival cultures of our deep past, a long and tumultuous period, Art emerges as part of the increase in the complexity and anxiety of growing tribal populations involved in intense competition with others for resources, and needing to re-organise themselves politically, martially, and culturally to survive. From the beginning, Art is the sympathetic, manipulable and - crucially - manipulative assistant to the Hunter and the Warrior, and slightly later begins serving as Chief MindWeapon to the Pharisee, Oracle and Tyrant. Only after the Hellenic Golden Age do we begin to think of and produce Art as ‘humanist’ magic intended to deepen the sympathies or broaden the intelligence of its audiences. Yet, even today, who could imagine the survival of - for example - the novel without the powerful Dark Arts of agents, publicists, advertisers...the prize-awarders in their covenly deliberations and redoubts?
Lord Bill is not a lone voice; the history of art is filled with magicians or occultists or cultural engineers, to repeat a term the performance artist, musician and Pandrogyne Genesis P Orridge uses in reference to herm-self.
Think of Yeats and George in their Golden Dawn get-up performing rituals; think of them vigorously conversing with spirits and Demi-gods in the windy light upon the Hill of Allen; think of them trance-writing A Vision together.
Blake talking to his angels and demons. The Bible prophets of old.
The Rolling Stones and The Beatles flirted with The Great Beast Aleister Crowley, who was himself a writer.
Timothy Leary. Robert Anton Wilson.
The English painter Austin Osman Spare, who popularised the sigil method of magic.
Rival contemporary narrators and sorcerers Grant Morrison and Alan Moore.
All Art is magic! All Art is magic! All Art is magic! All Art is magic! All Art is magic!
Magic is made of words and symbols charged with focused energy intended to have results in the material world.
Today’s most successful magician/artists seem to be advertisers, marketers, corporations, media and sports moguls...
Think of the mystical power of the McDonalds M, wooing infants to swoon over ‘happy meals’ sensible rats would reject; think of the handsome and cunning Luciferian, Arthur Guinness, who woos (and then dumps) young musicians, and even young poets, with slithering promises of fame; think of the X in Xmas as a target in your brain.
Consider how many people watch the same shit at the same time on the magic box in the room or are entranced by the magic realm called the internet performing unknown to themselves screen-sex-magic.
As Alan Moore has said, most artists have sold themselves down the river.
WE CALL ON YOU TO TAKE BACK YOUR POWER OF ART and make something magic, spell for us, conjure something effective and useful, causing a ripple effect like those butterfly wings that just might cause a hurricane to spin and blow down all the galleries in Florence.
Make chaos out of order.
Sprout shit out of roses, or, if you’re a sentimental Druid of the Celtic fog, roses out of excrement.
If you are the cause, why not choose the effect? Be deliberate, be careful, be brave.
We wait to see how strong your magic art is, charge it up and send it in.
All Art is magic! All Art is magic! All Art is magic! All Art is magic! All Art is magic!
Our submission period spans September 15th to October 15th. Send all submissions to colonyeditors@gmail.com, clearly marking which section you are submitting to in the subject line.